Just when thought I’d get out with no swearing, it pulled me back in.

I saved one of my annual rituals for today’s “work” day. Despite the advances in time keeping and scheduling technology, and their easy availability in stores or online, I still use a paper calendar at home and still make it myself. I do this partly to keep She Who Must Be Obeyed informed of my schedule and partly to make sure I get what I want.

The tradition is to start with one of Microsoft Publisher‘s calendar templates and then to tweak it and distort it until it’s the way I want it to be. I make it as large as possible on an A4 page to allow lots of space to write on each day. I also add Japanese national holidays and important days like birthdays. (Because it is used to inform She Who Must Be Obeyed, I also include my birthday.) This takes a couple hours and lots of swearing is involved.

However, today it took less time today because I passed on two traditions: reducing and changing the fonts and trying to mechanize all this by creating my own template. The former was done to maximize writing space, especially when I enlarged it on a copier to make a desk blotter that I used as a planner. (That mission has been replaced by Google Calendar.) Building a template had been attempted in order to save time and reduce swearing. Those attempts usually ended with swearing.

Today, though, I kept the process as simple as possible, and even made two variations: one to satisfy my “work” day requirement (as other people might be able to use it) and a second that is the real calendar with birthdays.

Everything was fine until I attempted to print and certain flaws revealed themselves: 1) I hadn’t st the page for A4. 2) I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and the calendar got messed up. Fixing the former was easy, the second, though, took some time and a lot of swearing.

There was also the matter of dwindling ink supply.

Eventually, I got it printed out safely. Now I have to resist the urge to submit the revision as tomorrow’s “work” day requirement. I also have to remember to change the ink cartridge. If I don’t the next time I use the printer there will be swearing.